The ‘Barefoot Contessa’ Reveals Why She Didn’t Have Children

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By Jenny Singer April 20, 2017

Cooking show star Ina Garten is synonymous with home, hospitality, and nurturing with food. So why has she never had children? The “Barefoot Contessa” star and cookbook author lives in an idyllic East Hamptons home near the beach, and her loving relationship with husband Jeffrey is the stuff of fairytales. But what kind of fairytale doesn’t feature any children?

A modern one.

“It was a choice I made very early,” Garten told Katie Couric this week on the news anchor’s podcast. “I really appreciate that other people do and we will always have friends that have children that we are close to,” Garten said, adding that she sometimes feels left out of the network of people who meet through their children.

But Garten, 69, is happy with her life as it is. “I really feel that I never would have been able to have the life I have,” she explained. “And so it’s a choice.”

Garten is a beloved public figure, bestselling author, and former nuclear policy writer for the White House. But does she ever feel shame about her decision to not have children?

“I never felt judged by it. Maybe people did, but I didn’t notice,” she told Couric.

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

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